Hiya all, just have a question for you all,

My Advantage has just run out, how is it worth my while to renew my subscription?

I'm only a new member, my first (trial) subscription was for 3 months and has just run out, but honestly, what's the point of it?

In the last 3 months there has only been 2 competitions run with prizes, that's not what I expected when I joined originally.

And (without double checking if people were serious or not) from random posts in the forum, a few winners have never received their prize.

Before anyone jumps in and says "Dechene, you're a long way off the skill level required to win a contest, why don't you stfuac?", well 1, I know that , and 2, that's not the point.

The site advertises itself as having prizes and has links to show off how many prizes they've given away; stands to reason that prizes should be offered a little bit more often than twice in 3 months doesn't it?

[b]From the Advantage signup page:

# Enter contests one month early[/b]
This is a big reason that I joined in the first place, I need the extra time to work on images because I'm still very new to Photoshop and it's hard to fit PSC in every day, I'm lucky if I can quickly come through and vote on images every 3-4 days let alone set time aside to make some.

# Entered in our monthly prize drawing
Monthly? Where do I find out when the next prize drawing is? Or who won the last one? Or who has ever won one, I've never seen nor heard a mention of these Monthly Computer
Prize Drawings anywhere else on the site, have you guys?

# Upload entries up to 1280x960 / 512KB
# Higher resolution source images
What can I say, bigger is better, these are good points. But I would like to be able to enter gifs as big as the source, why can't we?

# Upload and vote on which image we use next
Sounds great but i've no idea how far away my images are from being shown in the voting stage. I submitted some, it's been a couple months, it might be another 2 months til its voted on and then maybe another month before it is put into a comp, maybe there could be a faster way?

# Enhanced members only chat room
I get a special chat section; yeah...but there is a normal chat one anyways.

# Unlimited favorites, Fewer ads
Fewer ads, I've paid money, shouldn't that be NO ads?

I do like it here, I am not trying to slam the site or get myself kicked out, but I just think that some things should change a bit.

Like maybe:

Get some prizes in, or remove references to them.

Maybe every Thursday PSC could give away a weeks worth of Advantage to the winner, that'll cost nothing but I'll bet that
that comp gets the most entries every week.

Give members a spot to upload some of their own images to their portfolios, to show off some of the other chops they've made that they are proud of.

Update the tutorial section on a regular basis! I know it is time consuming but surely out of all the great artists on the site, a couple would be able to knock out a tut every now & again, give them more Advantage Time for doing so!
Or maybe 'buy' tuts from other member only sites, find a similar site and try share resources with them.

Alright my rambling rant has gone on way too long, I'm tired its 2am, and you probably stopped reading after I wrote 'Hiya' anyway, so I'll give it a rest.

Once again I'm not bagging PSC, I really like it here, I just want to know why people renew their subscription, so, let me know would you?

Thanks a lot,
Dechene

If winning prizes is all you think the advantage can give you, then you don't need to renew it. But if working on entries a month in advance, giving you the opportunity to clean up on your act and gain new skills is what you want, then you should. It's not that expensive.

But, as I said, it is up to you, what you want to get out of it.

...


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I would go for the learning experience, but that is all I ever wanted from this place to begin with.

I do it for the love. (wacks Marco with the bat again.)

Ok, dechene the point of advantage is to have an entire month to do a chop. And when you have that much time, not 3 days, you can experiment a lot on your entries, work more on them, upload better resolution pics, and it pretty much triples the chance you have to win. When i first got here my entries were bad, because I had just started to work with ps, and that was less than an year ago! Now if you look back in my portfolio,since my first entry, you''l see how much I've improved, alll thanks to advantage.
Also after about 3-4 months of working with ps and having advantage I finally had the glory and pride to see my entry in the first page.

In the immortal words of our great fallen leader JMH...

Ask not what your advantage can do for you... ask what you can do with your advantage.
My fellow citizens of PSC: ask not what PSC will do for you, but what together we can do for the betterment of this site.

Finally, whether you are advantaged citizens of PSC or basic citizens of this site, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history being the final judge of our entries, let us go forth to lead this site we love!

OK OK so I plagiarized the speech from JFK but I thought it fit well

dechene, advantage has gotten me a promotion at work and a ton of really cool people to talk to and to learn photoshop from. Those are the best prizes I could ever receive.

Somewhat of a ditto. I got my new job based quite a bit on what I've learned while at PSC.

When I started here there were no prizes other than the H2H tourney prizes. Advantage ONLY gave you a week advance to work on a pic, a larger source pic and a larger submission size.

No where along the line were prizes something that pushed me over the Advantage edge.

Personally I think the prizes have skewed PSC and they should only be for special occasions. Acquiring and coordinating prizes is a logistical nightmare. That's probably one big factor in why JMH sold the site to Proc and likewise probably why Proc isn't throwing a lot of prizes out there.

exactly Mr. Bean! Prizes have fooked the community love a bit IMPO. I'd love to see it go back to just having prizes for the finalists of H2H like when I first joined. Although if we wouldn't have had prizes every week like we were for a while there... and just maybe one a month, we'd probably still have prizes in the closet today. On the other hand the weekly anon contests have been a nice addition, I hope it stays. I'd also love to see one day a week, or maybe a month of chop on the fly. Where NONE get the source early.

and why back in my day (and yours), the source pictures and the entry size and kb limits were of a much smaller size. I think even the current basic user has a higher kb and canvas size than what the old advantage used to have. just don't hold me to that, the ol noodle ain't what it used to be

Actually the contests were much more fun and exciting whan we only had a week to work with.

I agree. I HATE having a month of pictures to look at and decide what to chop. Because the ADD kicks in and... oooh look a chicken!

Yes - stfuac!

We had advantage long before we had prizes.....

you have a shiny green YES! on your profile.

That alone is worth your money.

now stfuacoiwkyta

What Gref said....


Wait.

GREF???

Wow. First Gref comes back and now I'm lurking about? This site is going to hell!!!

Which is Reason #36 to stay Advantage.

Perhaps you are looking for someone else to pay for a renewal???
If you aren't happy then leave. There are far more important things to worry about. Crying about lack of prizes won't help get anymore.
So there I am stepping down from the soapbox and kicking it aside!

What means oiwkyta?